Republican Gomorrah: Inside the Movement That Shattered the Party
asbarez
Friday, June 3rd, 2011
Republican Gomorrah
BOOK REVIEW BY LEVON KIRAKOSIAN
Republican Gomorrah
Max Blumenthal
Nationbooks
Available at your local bookstore and anywhere else that books are sold.
In April 1915, the snow had just begun to melt from the peaks of Mount
Ararat and run into the villages nestled in its valleys. In the shadow
of the mountain lay the idyllic town of Van, which the Rushdoony clan
had called home for nearly 2,000 years. That spring brought
catastrophe for the Rushdoony’s. The Ottoman army laid siege to their
town, hoping to quash the only fortress of resistence against the
military crusade to eradicate the Armenian race. When the Ottoman
cannons opened fire, Y.K. Rushdoony and his wife fled for the hills,
embarking on a harrowing horseback trek westward through Europe, a
voyage across the Atlantic, and a trip from one end of the American
continent to the other, finally to begin a new life in California.
In 1916, the year of their arrival in the United States, Y.K.’s wife
gave birth to their second son, Roussas John `RJ’ Rushdoony. (R.J.’s
older brother had been one of the 1.5 million who perished in the
Armenian Genocide.) ……., and as a son of survivors of a recent
genocide the young Rushdoony was raised on tales of the slaughter that
uprooted his family’s ancient Christian heritage. The above is an
excerpt from Max Blumenthal’s book, Republican Gomorrah: Inside the
Movement That Shattered the Party. Soon `RJ’ Rushdoony became an
ultraconservative Orthodox Presbyterian minister, started his campaign
to `restore purity’ to the fallen world and nurtured the sprouting
conservative counterculture.
R.J. Rushdoony, who’s almost unheard of, influenced the Christian
right and provided them with their plan for what they saw as the
promised land, which is a actually theocratic dystopia, a virtual
hell. He advocated substituting theocracy for the Constitution, wrote,
thousand-word tomes explaining how this would work out during the
1960s, during the battles for desegregation, and the extreme right.
Under Rushdoony’s plan, disobedient children, witches, blasphemers,
adulterers, abortion doctors would all be executed, according to,
Leviticus case law.
As extreme as it sounds, it had an enormous impact on the right-wing
evangelical movement as it moved from the pews into the political
realm, because it gave them something to campaign for, even if what
they were going to get was going to be more along the lines of a
Shattered Republican Party.
It was astonishing to find at the center of a radical theocratic
movement that has influenced and provided a moral blueprint for the
emerging conservative counter culture, RJ Rushdoony, a son of Armenian
immigrants. After I finished reading this book I kept thinking about
RJ Rushdoony and asking myself how could a son of Armenian immigrants,
who witnessed the annihilation of their people, possess such
intolerance for those who have been pushed out to the margins of
society. Strangely, I have seen this on a personal level meeting young
men who have emigrated to the U.S. from socially conservative
countries of the Middle East, however, not to such an extreme level
from those who have lived their entire lives and have been educated in
the U.S
Reasonably one would think that a man whose family escaped mass murder
and were victims of the same ideology would go on to encourage
compassion, solidarity, and understanding, but Rushdoony went the
other way, taking literally the 613 laws in the Book of Leviticus.
In 1973 RJ Rushdoony wrote The Institutes of Biblical Law.his magnum
opus, outlined his philosophy of Christian Reconstructionism and it
greatly interested racist southern pastors in America, particularly
Jerry Falwell. Rushdoony’s writings were a major influence on the
Christian Right’s philosophy. In his book he advocates capital
punishment for `disobedient children, unchaste women, apostates,
blasphemers, practitioners of witchcraft, adulterers.’ He wanted
nothing less than to grasp the reins of government to force a
theocratic society; there are so many parallels to the goals and
aspirations of the Taliban.
Gary North, the Presbyterian Christian Reconstructionist, is his
son-in-law, and, while not backing down on the mass death penalty,
advocates stoning rather than burning at the stake, because stoning is
cheaper. As for who would be doing the killing it would be Christians.
We thought that such ideology could be harbored in foreign places such
as Afghanistan regrettably it is being advocated in the U.S. today.
During the early 1950’s Rushdoony befriend Robert Welch who shared his
visceral hatred for anyone who liberal tendencies. Welch had retired
as a candy manufacturer and used his wealth to create the John Birch
Society. (Its headquarters was in Glendale California.) This fringe
group gained notoriety by red baiting prominent public figures such as
President Truman, President Eisenhower, and Allen Dulles, director of
the CIA. On the fateful day that President John F. Kennedy visited
Dallas, November 22, 1963, Birchers welcomed him by mounting posters
around the city showing the president’s head at the center of rifle
crosshairs. Rushdoony was impressed by the Birchers actions, he wrote,
`The key to the John Birch Society’s effectiveness has been a plan of
operation which has strong resemblance to the early church.’
For the leadership of the Christian right, race was the issue that
galvanized their political activism. But as America grew increasingly
weary of overt, ugly displays of Dixieland racism, their resentment
transmuted into a more palatable moral crusade. The strategy to win
that crusade -propelled the Christian right close to Rushdoony’s
theocratic vision of government.
The G.O.P. of the 21st century bears scant resemblance to The Party of
Eisenhower. It has been co-opted by authoritarians like James Dobson
and Tom DeLay, people who, as predicted by psychologist Erich Fromm
nearly 70 years earlier, in an attempt to deny their own human flaws
have risen to power by donning the armor of religious, bullying
self-righteousness and imposing their misdirected anger on others.
The Party of President Eisenhower has been seized by the religious
right the Republican Party of today bears very little likeness to that
of the G.O, P. of Lincoln, Roosevelt and Eisenhower.
President Eisenhower was fascinated throughout his presidency (and
probably before), with Eric Hoffer’s book The True Believer which was
likely influenced by social psychologist and psychoanalyst Erich
Fromm’s Escape From Freedom. It is the latter who argues that popular
movements are people eager to surrender their freedom to a cause,
people who seek personal transcendence through authoritarian political
parties, causes and heroes. They allow the tyranny of the majority and
permit small groups to control their movement why not their Party.
Hoffer puts it this way: `Faith in a holy cause is to a considerable
extent a substitute for the lost faith in ourselves.’ Blumenthal
throughout his book refers to Fromm`s teachings as he explores the
many scandals, cover-ups and hypocrisies of the ever more radical
Republican Party.
This hardbound book was a fascinating read, Max Blumenthal has written
for The Nation Magazine, Media Matters For America, the Huffington
Report and the Daily Beast, which constitutes much of his reporting. I
learned a great deal about the Republican Party, the Christian Right’s
culture of personal crises, and that they’re as out of control as
America’s future is. I highly recommend it so you may better
understand the sad, but true story behind this mass movement.